


make a wish

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Bittersweet, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Female Friendship, Mentions of Mack/Elena, cameos by Coulson and Mack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 14:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11382279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy's plans for her 30th birthday take an unexpected turn.





	make a wish

**one.**

She knows what she’s doing it’s a bad idea. Very much against protocol, probably risky, and definitely stupid. But she can’t help it.

She knows Cal - sorry, _Doctor Winslow_ \- has lunch here in this local restaurant every Tuesday and Thursday. He gets on with the staff, and his office is right across the street. Daisy knows this. It sounds a bit like she’s stalking her but she didn’t really look into it, into his habits.

The place is not crowded.Good. There’s a booth empty next to the booth where Cal is sitting. Even better. 

There’s the waitress Daisy has decided she likes, from watching her interact with Cal other times. She seems kind. Daisy knows enough waitresses to know they are a kind breed. You can count on them. She waves at her.

“So, today is my birthday,” Daisy explains, trying to sound as light as she doesn’t feel. “Do you think you can do one of those things where you put a candle on a muffing?”

The woman seems to see through her lightness. “I’ll ask the kitchen,” she replies with a gentle node.

While she waits Daisy picks a couple of packets of demerara sugar and fidgets with them on the table, not even noticing she’s doing it. This is not the first birthday she is going to spend alone, and it’s almost certain it won’t be the last one.

When the muffin arrives Daisy forgets for a moment all about her situation and thinks how pretty it is, the muffin and the lit candle, the sparkles off it. She smiles.

This was the plan. She thinks about how her father is right in the booth behind her and she closes her eyes a moment and it’s almost like they are together, in her mind.

She is not going to engage - she’s not _that stupid_. This is just about illusion. Her fantasy. She can’t celebrate her 30th birthday with her father, so she’s going to celebrate it _besides_ her father. Daisy thinks it’s both sad and a little genius.

“Are you having lunch alone on your birthday?” a familiar voice comes from the next booth.

Daisy turns in time to see Cal slide from his seat and into the one in front of Daisy’s. He doesn’t really ask and Daisy doesn’t get the feeling he is being thoughtless, just impulsive. From what little she knows of her father “impulsive” is definitely on the list. 

At first she doesn't reply, hoping if she ignores the situation then it didn't happen. 

“Well, yeah,” she admits. She hasn’t planned for this. So much for not wanting to engage. “My friends are stuck at work and-”

“But that’s unacceptable,” Cal replies, looking personally offended. It makes Daisy’s heart ache. She’s a stranger, yet he can’t bear to think of her alone on her birthday. There was a time when she hoped she hadn’t inherited any traits from her father, and while none of his crimes can be excused, she doesn’t feel that way anymore. Cal waves the waitress. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Daisy says. “I’m happy for the company.”

And while _happy_ might not be the word, she can’t say no. And she can't not smile at her father when he makes himself at home in the booth, however ambivalent or sad the image feels.

He orders another coffee for himself and Daisy decides to indulge herself and have a milkshake.

“Have I met you before?” Cal asks.

She was expecting that.

“Yeah, I think I might have passed by your office a couple of times.”

“Ah, there you go.”

But he can’t remember her name. Not from the last time they spoke, not from before. Daisy tries not to get her heart broken again by that. He has his own life and she is nothing to him. It’s natural. She repeats her name. He thinks it's pretty, again. “I'm Doctor Winslow,” he introduces himself, the _doctor_ thing making him sound even friendlier, for some weird reason, it's like, hey, the doctor is here, you don't have to worry. 

“A July birthday, that’s nice, summer birth, very nice” he goes on. “Where are your folks?”

Daisy freezes for a moment, but Cal can’t tell.

“They’re… they’re gone.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,”

“It’s okay, it’s been a while.”

She remembers Cal snapping Jiaying’s spine and she knows it can never be long enough. They’re gone, they keep being gone over and over, every day.

“You shouldn't be alone on your birthday,” he says. 

They make small talk – what else? they are two strangers – but it's nice to hear about Cal's clinic, his gentle anecdotes about mischievous pets. Of course Daisy has to lie about what _she_ does, making up some dreadful-sounding office job.

“You have to wish for something,” he says when she is about to blow out the candle.

“Oh, yeah.”

She doesn't wish for anything.

She doesn't want to be greedy. This is enough.

It's the principle of the things that counts, not what they actually talk about. What counts is this: she's eating a birthday muffin on her birthday and her father is here, in front of her, cracking jokes and trying to cheer her up, and this has never happened before. This is the kind of thing she used to dream about in the orphanage. She finally got it.

“How do you like your milkshake? They do good ones here.”

They do, Daisy agrees.

“Yes, it's good. I have a couple of friends who always tell me to eat healthier stuff but, I thought I could treat myself today.”

“Good idea. Me, I'm a stress eater. You?”

“Me? I'm a stress _everything_ ,” Daisy replies, feeling she can be open to both a stranger and the closest family member she has left on earth.

Cal chuckles at that.

She gets wondering, drifting - what kind of things did her mother like for her birthday? Cal must have been there for a few years. What did they do? Jiaying must have seen so many years pass, maybe she didn’t even think it important anymore, maybe she was amused by Cal’s insistence that they’d celebrate. Did Cal buy cake for her? Maybe he made one for her. Daisy is trying to reconstruct a family romance she will never have proof of. She wishes she had asked Cal more about her mother, much more, when he still had his memories.

More than anything Daisy wishes Jiaying could be here too, in this restaurant, in this booth, even if it was as a stranger, even if she could never recognize the daughter she had lost so much for. It’s unfair, that Jiaying didn’t even have the punishment of oblivion, like Cal did, when she had suffered much more. Daisy feels like she failed her. She should have done more, maybe if she had realized Jiaying’s plans earlier she could have convinced her, maybe she could have saved her…

“Are you okay?” Cal asks, his voice bringing her back to reality. 

Daisy realizes her hands are balled tightly into fists under the table. She relaxes them.

“I’m fine. It’s just… 30th birthday, you know, it’s a big one.”

“Yes, it’s a big one, it’s okay to feel weird,” he tells her.

She nods absently. She discovers she is still angry: at Jiaying for being too far gone, at Cal for surviving and leaving her behind, and at herself for being so powerless.

“No need to be ashamed,” Cal is saying. “I spent my last birthday alone, too.”

No, you didn’t. She thinks. She was there. Watching from a distance. He looked a bit sad. He normally doesn't. Maybe there are things the Tahiti protocol can't erase. She tries not to look sad herself right now. Would be a terrible giveaway, and embarrassing in front of a stranger.

“Hey,” Cal says, lighting up.

“What?”

“Okay. I shouldn’t tell you this but… I know a place where we can go see some puppies.”

He wiggles his eyebrows, inviting her along.

Daisy smiles, this time there’s not a hint of sadness or ambivalence. 

Best birthday ever.

**two.**

She misses the meeting time with the Zephyr and only comes on board late in the afternoon, after leaving Cal at his office-slash-flat. They have a mission tomorrow and a part of the team, including Daisy, have to leave for Germany soon. She timed it so that she wouldn't make the rest late but still, it's not what they had agreed.

To be honest she is a bit concerned about what her teammates are going to say, if they are going to ask where she’s been, or if they are worried about her. She both doesn't want to get into it – she can't tell them about today, anyway, she's not supposed to make contact – and she'd love someone to talk to. Perhaps that is her only birthday wish.

She goes up to the recreation room, hoping to just fall on the couch and not feel sorry for herself but the place is already taken.

Daisy tilts her head, not understanding the picture in front of her for a moment. Mack and Coulson are slouched on the couch, but they’re asleep, and not only are they asleep it seems like Mack fell asleep and then Coulson did so _on top of him_ , his cheek resting happily against Mack’s upper arm. Their faces are amazing, and beautiful, they are relaxed and almost blank, a half smile that only comes from the relief of exhaustion. Their hair looks all ruffled and their sleeves rolled, some white dust over their forearms. Daisy opens her mouth at the scene, but stops herself from letting out a giggle. She wouldn’t want to disturb the sleeping beauties, anyway.

Then she sees Elena in the adjacent kitchen, looking _at her_ with an equally amused expression.

Daisy walks around the couch, careful not to wake the two men.

“What the hell happened to them?” she asks Elena.

“This,” she says.

She goes to the fridge and produces as round, clearly homemade chocolate cake. It has dark chocolate on top of chocolate and the number 30 written in white, probably cream or custard or white chocolate. Anyway it looks delicious.

“We finished the mission very early this morning,” Elena but instead of getting some rest they insisted on baking a birthday cake for you, and then waiting up. Son bobos.”

“I…”

“I helped a bit,” the other Inhuman clarifies. “But only a bit. I wanted to take a nap.”

Daisy feels something terrible stuck in her throat, both the feeling that she doesn’t deserve these people, and also the slippery sensation that she is going to lose them as soon as she turns around, or rather that she’ll do something to lose them. But she swallows, and fights against it, and smile at the scene. She’s pretty sure Coulson is drooling a bit on Mack’s shoulder. This is even better than going to see puppies. Well, it’s _comparable_ in any case.

Her eyes go back and forth from the cake to Elena to Coulson and Mack, like a part of her doesn’t quite understand what it’s happening, and the other part of her doesn’t believe it’s real.

Elena pats the seat next to her, encouraging Daisy to come closer.

“So. Coulson says you probably went to see your father. How was it?” she asks.

Daisy throws a sideways glance to the couch. So much for secrecy. But Elena's tone means no one thinks it's something very serious, her breaking the rules like this.

Even though they hadn't even met when all the shit hit the fan Elena knows all about Cal. It's hard keeping secrets from Elena, she loves knowing about your life and your past and she will loudly ask you to share. For someone who keeps to herself as much as Daisy someone like that is a gift.

“It was weird,” she tells her. “But nice. Very nice.”

Elena makes a grimace. “Very nice must be tougher on you. No?”

Daisy nods. In a way it was harder that just sitting alone and pretending. She tells YoYo all about that, the details, even the puppies and their soft pawns that almost made Daisy cry because she wants something soft. 

Elena listens to her for a while – Daisy guesses her birthday wish has come true, then, so easily – and then she shakes her head energetically like saying “enough about your misery, chica” (she has the feeling the YoYo in her head uses more Spanish than she does in real life). She pushes the plate with the cake in front of her.

Daisy hesitates, looking back at Mack and Coulson (still very much asleep, still lovingly yet comically tangled around each other, weary soldiers of the chocolate cake baking war, she guesses), feeling bad for leaving them out, but not wanting to wake them up. Elena seems to read her thoughts, and throws an around around her back, nudging her towards the plate.

“Come on, they miss the cake. Toda para nosotras. I got you some tequila.”

Those have to be the most beautiful words Daisy has ever heard.

“Have I ever told you you’re my best friend?”

Elena lifts her chin. “It has come up in conversation, yes.”

Daisy laughs, thinking how two years of private English lessons with Mack has made Elena’s second language almost perfect.

With Elena’s arm around her shoulder and looking at Coulson and Mack on the couch, clothes sprinkled with chocolate shavings, sleeping soundly, Daisy feels something very different to what she felt sitting across Cal in the restaurant, having her birthday with her father. It feels different, but also very similar.

“You smell of dog,” Elena teases.

“Puppy,” Daisy points out. “Like you're not jealous.”

She gets the cutlery, cutting big slices for her and YoYo as the other woman goes grab the glasses. But of course leaving just enough cake for two more people.

She thinks maybe she was wrong. Maybe she won’t spend more birthdays alone. Because she didn’t, today.


End file.
